Wednesday, March 30, 2016

In this article, aspiring game designer Barret Gaylor argues that game critics often miss the point behind certain systems and condemn them due to personal tastes.

I am kind of amazed how much some game commentators don't understand that people have different taste. It should be an obvious concept, but it seem like the people who say that they understand this are the people who don't follow through. Obviously, I don't think that they are doing it on purpose; I think there is just a flaw in the way a lot of people criticize game design techniques that cause people to fall into this trap. Many critics get into the habit of saying a game design technique is bad, as opposed to understanding that they might not be a fan of the technique.

To be honest with you all, I began thinking about writing this after I watched a YouTube video about the recent Thief remake called Thief vs. AAA Gaming.

I apologize to the person who made this video, but I just could not
watch this video in its entirety. The creator of the video argues that
the navigation in the original Thief game is better than the navigation
systems in all modern triple A games today. He even says the phrase
"Waypoints are the laziest kind of design" as if he was trying to make
his opinion more myopic than it already is. In my opinion, it falls into
all of the traps that I am talking about. My biggest problem is that
the creator does not seen to even understand why the navigation system
in the original Thief worked. The navigation system in Thief is meant to
be a puzzle. The game gives the player a basic layout of the
environment without even telling them where they are in that environment
and ask them to find landmarks and figure out how to get from one place
to another. This type of immersive navigation puzzle is really cool,
but not all gamers want their navigation system to be a puzzle. This is
where we start to understand how different taste can cause the Thief
system to be bad for some gamers because the system is meant to create
an element of challenge for the player, but not all gamers want to be
challenged by their navigation systems. Some gamers just want their
navigation system to be a functional tool, which is why a waypoint
system is sometimes the best solution to the problem. In games like
Skyrim and Fallout where the world map is huge, a player might just see a
place on the map and want to go there, and they might want to do it is
the least challenging way possible. Some might ask why someone would
want their game to be less challenging, but I would ask them why they
thought exploration had to be challenging? I mean, shouldn't exploration
be engaging in of itself, without the need for challenge? The
engagement that someone gets from exploration is the feeling one gets
when they discover something new. Now, I am not saying that the new Thief game is good or bad, I am saying that dismissing waypoint system
entirely just because you don't like them might be a little
shortsighted.

You might think that this is a mistake that is only done be lesser known
critics like the one above, but you see it everywhere, even by very
well known critics. If you have ever watched Zero Punctuation by Ben
"Yahtzee" Croshaw, then you might have also read his article on regenerating health.
Yahtzee uses the length of the article to explain why he thinks that
regenerating health in shooters is fundamentally flawed. Again, this is
an example of another critic not recognizing the upsides of a technique.
Regenerating Health can be a useful tool in a game designers tool kit
and it can do a lot of things for a shooter. For example, regenerating
health can allow a designer to tune an encounter more tightly since they
will always know how much health a player will have when they enter the
encounter space, which is something you don't all ways have in a game
without regenerating health. Regenerating health can also give the
player better feedback to whether or not they are playing the game
well. Whenever you die, the game basically tells you that you were in a
situation where you were being shot too many times in too short a point
of time. Regenerating health can really help get rid of a lot of
variables that can cause a game to become too frustrating, but you will
never understand this if you have already decided that the technique is
bad.

I don't think people who make these kinds of argument understand how
pretentious they can sound by doing this. When a critic says that a
technique is bad, they are basically saying that everyone who likes the
technique is somehow wrong, but this in in of itself is wrong. There is
no such thing as someone's personal taste being wrong, and I think the
reason this happens is because the way the gaming community goes about
game criticism might actually be the thing that is flawed. Game
criticism seems to always be about trying to convince your audience how
you think games should be made as opposed to just telling your audience
how a game made you feel as an individual. On animenewsnetwork.com, during one of their ANNCast podcast about criticism,
Zac Bertschy, Executive Editor on the site, expressed that, to him,
criticism is an expression of how a piece of art made you feel as a
person. I agree with this statement a lot and I feel like critics would
be doing the gaming community of favor if they started writing with this
mentality in mind. Criticism should be about empathizing with another
persons experience and using your understanding of their taste to figure
out whether or not you will like a game or using their experience to
start and interesting discussion.

If you have already decided that a technique is incorrect, then you have
destroyed the ability for an interesting discussion to take place
because you have already decided that all the points that the other side
might have must obviously be incorrect. If critics and gamers continue
to talk about games along these lines, we will continue to have problems
understanding the different tastes and viewpoints that we should all
know exist in our community.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

A few weeks back, I did an interview with the Learning Partnership, a charitable organization dedicated to supporting, promoting, and advancing publicly funded education in Canada through lasting partnerships between business, government, education, and community organizations.

Listen on to hear about gamification vs. game-based learning, chocolate-covered broccoli, careers in the game industry, and more.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10
years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus,
2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the
founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

The IGDA Game Design SIG will be holding its annual SIG meeting and roundtable at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, March 16 at 2-3 PM in Moscone North Hall, Room 110. Please join us to discuss how the SIG can make you a better game designer. In particular, we will be focused on the creation of study groups for game design topics and exploring mentoring options.

For schools with technological challenges, these types of games may be a more affordable option. Moreover, analog games provide a social aspect that can't be replicated in digital games and allow educators to change parameters to suit the particular classroom. Analog games have proven to be especially effective with struggling students and students with disabilities.

Informal schooling in after-school programs, summer camps, and museums provide children with the opportunity to pursue learning at their own pace and according to their own interests.

In particular, check out the audio interview, which covers material not included in the article.

Mega-gaming also happens with digital games and it begs the question: Is the true essence of learning outside of the game rather thaninside? What do you think? If so, then all those on-board assessment tools may not be uncovering the true state of a student's educational progress.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.